"You cannot find out if one has been filed on you; anyone revealing that information is breaking the law."


The government decrees that your bank spies on you.
This is one of the outgrowths of the income tax. Under penalty of law, banks are required to report "suspicious activities."

A government program designed to track down terrorists and money launderers is frightening bank customers, frustrating financial institutions and inundating federal agencies with secret reports of dubious value.

It's called the Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR, and critics say it victimizes honest citizens who are conducting legitimate financial activities through legitimate banking channels, while generating a flood of useless paperwork and burdening financial institutions with billions of dollars in costs.

Experts predict nearly 1 million such reports will be filed in 2006, a bit more than half by depository institutions, the rest by money-services businesses, casinos, card clubs and the securities and futures industries. Insurance companies had to begin filing in spring 2006, and mutual-fund companies will have to establish anti-money laundering programs and file SARs in fall 2006.

In total, 919,230 SARs were filed in 2005. You cannot find out if one has been filed on you; anyone revealing that information is breaking the law.

What can trigger a SAR? Almost anything out of the ordinary that rouses the suspicion of the personnel where the transaction took place. According to their rules, any group of transactions totaling $5,000 or more that "is not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage" can cause enough suspicion to create a SAR. The reports are filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the Department of the Treasury, and shared with law enforcement.

To be sure, the reports have led to criminal investigations and prosecutions. But the report also has mushroomed into a paper-generating monster that threatens to create Suspicious Activities Reports in government files on an increasing number of ordinary citizens.

Think about it. The entire law presumes you are guilty until proven innocent. Banks were made into government spies by the income tax laws. Anti-terrorism is just the latest excuse.

Simple question for you to think about. Why is what you do with your money any business of the government?

Hat tip Wendy McElroy, who had linked to the original MSN money article, now part of the archives.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - July 17, 2006 at 06:01 AM  Tag


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